


You Aren't Alone

by Androids_in_Metropolis



Series: Maximoff/Barton Family Relations ft. Auntie Nat [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Depression, Drug Use, F/M, Forced Relationship, Gen, Hope, Slice of Life, Underage Drinking, family attention, family help, happy-ish (hopeful) ending, sad wanda!, short span of time and big changes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:28:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Androids_in_Metropolis/pseuds/Androids_in_Metropolis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda fell in with the wrong kids, and over the month and a half of school looses herself and the strong woman she thought she was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Aren't Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Abuse is not a joke, and should be taken absolutely seriously. Everything depicted in the story is abuse, depression, and no-good. It's not intended to mirror/be reality, and is not intended to romantisize abuse/addiction/all else bad. This is intended as a story to show a woman who is working herself out, and helping herself by asking for help. This is a story about an abusive relationship between two underage characters, and is therefore even more awful than two adults. This story is a moral story, and the bad guys have not been depicted as having hidden depths. This is about a girl finding herself and getting help and getting stronger, not about some 50-shades-of-grey type reality. That is rubbish. 
> 
> If you do not feel comfortable reading this, it is not needed to understand the other stories in the series, though it will be mentioned.
> 
> You have been warned.

Wanda’s school friends were not the type of kids parent’s imagine themselves having. They were hard edge. They were mean. They were sad and confused and willing to take or do anything that would make them numb. They felt too much. Most importantly, they all had stories. They all had reasons. Wanda had fit right in-An immigrant, an orphan, adopted, depressed, attractive but insecure, weird. It was all stacked in her favour when she had sat down at their table on the first day of her American high school life, introducing herself in her mysterious and tired Sokovian accent before proceeding to charm each and every one of the ‘freak clique’. She went to their parties, ate their lunch, talked their talk, and felt their feelings. 

She knew that her best friend, Clara, cried herself to sleep every night. To wanda that was normal. Though she was happy with the Barton’s it was still all relative to her; Being with them was better than being alone, but being with her real family in her real home speaking her language would have been better, and since she had never been one to take second best, it made her sad. 

She knew her boyfriend, Martin, wasn’t the kind of kid that your parent’s wanted you to go out with; He smoked, he drank, he wore leather and had long hair and a creepy, intriguing smile, like he was undressing you in his head and he had all your secrets, giving silence a companionable, secretive feeling. 

She didn’t introduce him to the Bartons, or Pietro (who went to a different school, anyway). Truth be told, she wouldn’t have trusted him with any of her siblings, especially not Lily. Should that have set of a thousand different warning bells? Yes. Did it? Not for Wanda. She had dated creeps before, in fact, she had only dated creeps. Men who were willing to go out with a fifteen year old living on the streets of a war torn country. Men who were just as sad and desperate as Martin was. Men who were just as oily, and seemed just as dangerous. Wanda thought that was normal.

When Martin took it a step too far she didn’t tell anyone, and she didn’t show Laura or Clint or Nat her bruises. She didn’t tell anyone, actually, keeping it to herself. She didn’t break up with Martin, even though she should have and she was beginning to see that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She would never want this for any of her little siblings or her twin, but maybe, she thought, maybe this was how it should be for her? Maybe she didn’t deserve anything else?

School had torn down her already failing self-esteem, and though she was happy at home, as soon as she stepped out the door the change was almost palpable. Her shoulders hunched forward, her long sleeves were drawn over her hands, her head bent low. She would stay out late, telling her parents (the Barton’s) she was out with friends, but not telling them about the drugs going around or the keggers or the kisses forcefully placed on her pure skin. Martin would take her wrists, pin her to the grass of who-ever’s yard they were crashing that night, forcing her to accept his attention, though no affection was offered. 

Still, she didn’t tell anyone. 

Slowly her behavior changed at home too. She didn’t play with her younger siblings anymore, didn’t stay up late with Pietro reading or doing homework on either of their beds, didn’t cook and clean just for fun. She didn’t talk much, anymore, either, and while Clint thought she was just going through some sort of teenage female phaze Laura thought otherwise, beginning to see the signs she knew all too well. 

She had been in Wanda’s place in high school, and though Nat’s school experience was slightly different than hers or wanda’s, she knew that she had felt much the same way. She began to get really scared when Wanda would stay out all night, or when she came home too early. She got more and more worried, trying to keep it reasonable, trying not to get in Wanda’s business too much before she got actually and truly scared. 

When Wanda came home with a bruise across her cheek she told Clint, “Oh, it’s nothing. We were playing dodge ball, and I am not so good at this game,” she explained, a half assed and annoyingly believable lie. Nat exchanged glances with Nat across the table, a knowing and alarmed look passing between them, though Clint and the children seemed oblivious to the cliche that ‘dodgeball’ was, and how it was code for ‘I got hit’. 

After dinner the two women sat Wanda down at the table as Clint did the dishes and Pietro dried and the whole story came out, resulting in a lot of crying from Wanda, a thrown plate from Clint, Pietro wrapping his younger half up in his arms and pained looks in both women’s faces as they worked their way shaily through the whole story. They were surprised it had been going on for a month and half-Basically since the start of school-already, and the girl hadn’t told them anything. Then again, she was Wanda. She didn’t ask for help. She didn’t think she needed it. 

In a sick way this was a familiar feeling to both women, though they hadn’t felt it in a long time; The feeling of thinking you deserved the pain someone was giving you, thinking that violation was normal and that sadness was an acceptable blanket emotion. Natasha had felt that way all through school and through most of her young adult life-It had taken a long time to know she was in charge and to be okay with herself and her needs. Laura had been exactly where Wanda was, same friends, different names. She knew the feeling all too well, and though she had pushed it away, hadn’t felt it in a very long time, it came bubbling to the surface, bringing tears to her eyes as she wrapped her teenaged daughter up in her arms, both crying. 

The school was called, Wanda was transferred to Pietro’s school, she was sent to therapy, Pietro always had an eye out for her, the police were called, Clara was removed from her home. Half the kids Wanda used to hang out with were put in jail, crimes such as robbery, drugs, traffic tickets, rape, etc...all adding up. She lost a lot of trust, but she also placed it in places it was bound to get stolen from. 

She got better, more confident with each passing day. She set goals for herself, she forced herself to learn how to run her life again. She spent time with her siblings, and her aunt, and her parents. She trained harder than ever to be an avengers, angry at herself for ever having been so weak. It wasn’t weakness though, she learned. Well, it was, but it was something else too; It was weakness and loneliness and sadness and growing up all rolled into a dangerkid. She was half way to seventeen now, and she was determined to be her own boss by then. She wouldn’t feel this way any more. She wouldn’t think of Martin any more. She wouldn’t let anyone like Martin into her life again, she wouldn’t let someone like Clara go without help again. She wouldn’t let someone like herself go without help again. 

She would be more than that. 

And she didn’t have to be more than that alone; She had her whole family looking after her, helping her out, holding her up. 

She didn’t have to be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Please review :)


End file.
